


Wrong Number

by panda_shi



Series: The Wrong Moves [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cute, Drunk Texting, Drunken Confessions, Drunkenness, Explicit Language, Insults, M/M, Meet-Cute, Modern Era, Please Help Yamato, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:34:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28609908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panda_shi/pseuds/panda_shi
Summary: Tenzou gets yelled at via possibly drunk if not tipsy text by a stranger who clearly, was in a bad relationship. He ends up with a coffee date.
Relationships: Umino Iruka/Yamato | Tenzou
Series: The Wrong Moves [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2104614
Comments: 13
Kudos: 56





	Wrong Number

**Author's Note:**

> Self beta'd. Excute the bullshit summary but seriously, that's the gist of it.

Tenzou isn’t tired, he’s _exhausted_.

And that is saying something considering that he’s spent most of his life serving in the special ops unit of the military. He’s been through barren desserts, thick rainforests, spent weeks on reconnaissance and trekking through god forsaken lands for too long. Tenzou knows his limits. Knows his ability, his strength and just how much his body can take before it collapses in exhaustion.

But now, as he stumbles and falls face first shirtless into his bed, mildly damp from a much needed steaming hot shower, Tenzou swears that military training is nothing compared to working Mos Burgers. Having been honorably discharged from ANBU, Tenzou was forced to step into the world of the normal, the living and the very reality he had fought and bled for. Unfortunately, there aren’t any job openings that pay quick, immediate cash in the day to day hubbub that requires stealth, assassination, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering and assault and defense tactic maneuver. Not without him enrolling in the police academy, firefighting academy, or some sort of academy for some sort of certification. Granted, it isn’t exactly going to take him years; still, enrollment doesn’t open up till September and Tenzou was discharged in December. There were no exceptions for the courses he needed, thereby robbing him of a lot of options.

He was going to have to wait till September for his classes to start.

Mos Burgers just happened to take off after a very successful social media campaign on TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat.

And they needed kitchen staff, were willing pay to weekly and honestly, they told him he only had to flip burgers as fast as he can, prepare the dough (because Mos Burgers bake their own bread) and clean up the kitchen by close of business.

Tenzou, however, on top of doing all that, has pretty much turned into Mos Burgers all around guy. He has darted across town just to keep up with the delivery demands on the boss’s pastel pink sputtering scooter that makes very embossing noises if it goes anywhere above fifty kilometers per hour. He has waited tables. Has had soda spilled on his front far too many times. Had to endure demanding and angry customers who has been waiting in line for too long and really, how is that any of Mos Burgers’ fault when they are adequately staffed but just can’t keep up with the demand anymore? It’s not Mos Burgers’ fault that everybody is just so into their burgers. It’s not Mos Burgers’ fault that because everyone’s into it, the line wait can go up to an hour.

Tenzou has been coming home everyday at one in the morning. Sometimes two.

Today, he had come home at twelve-thirty eight.

An early night!

And he intends to catch up on the news, maybe some of the gossip column before bed on his phone before getting up in the morning for his morning run and starting the mad cycle at Mos Burgers all over again.

They pay really well though. And the owner, bless her kind heart, is no skimp when it comes to rewarding her staff with bonuses.

Tenzou is in the middle of reading his favorite TV drama gossip column and some spoilers (because where is even his time to watch television anymore), when his phone pings an alert for a text message in five steady successions.

**You had this coming for a long while, so listen up asshole, and listen good.**

**We are over!!!$%%^**

**You don’t get to leave me saddled with back rent, disappear on me and run off with whatever conquest you decide is more worthy and of more benefit to your lofty ambitions and foolish dreams. You don’t get to CANCEL me like that after all the support, time, finance and quite frankly, ass and blowjobs I have pretzelled myself into giving you *((^**

**YOU DON’T CANCEL ME! &&*)(&**

*** &%$^ I CANCEL YOU!**

Tenzou blinks rapidly, _staring_ at the clearly very emotionally charged text if the symbols were anything to go by. The phone pops with an emoji of a middle finger, something that makes Tenzou _snort_ with amusement before his phone starts chiming again with more texts.

**I loved you! But you clearly had other ideas! Thank you, by the way, for stringing me along for the past four years! I could have had more fun in college without you! But I chose you and I realize now what a stupid ass decision that was!**

**You never clean up, you are a slob and by the way, you armpits stinks! Deodorant, fucker! Use it!**  
  
**And your dick is small! IT IS NOT MAGNUM SIZED LIKE YOU THINK IT IS ASS FACE!!! $#%%**

Tenzou can’t help but tilt his head at the last text, tentatively sniffing his own armpit which, thankfully, does smell like deodorant and soap. Tenzou pointedly does not lift the covers to check on his own dick. There's no need for that. 

Shaking his head as the phone vibrates with more messages, he stares. And then starts to feel sorry for the poor sob.

**You owe me money! Lots of money!%^$% & Fucking $%E% millions of ryos I am sure! I had to work two jobs while in university to help you with your tuitions fees and failed business merges you lazy fuck! While taking care of our shared apartment! And you always left dishes on coffee table! They belong in the sink you foul, wretched, swishy slumlord of a crusty, dusty deluded cucumber! You need therapy!**

Tenzou chortles. That is one creative insult. This person must really hate cucumbers. Which is sad because Tenzou quite enjoys them in salads. They're quite filling, cheap and nutritious!

**And you call my teaching job pathetic? Underpaid? It is the only thing that has kept me sane through this entire ordeal that is being in a one sided relationship with you! #@$#@**

**There are puddles that are a lot deeper than you, asshole! %$%$#**

Tenzou rubs the back of his head. He’s starting to wonder if the person typing is tipsy, drunk or perhaps just sobbing their eyes out that they can’t control the movement of their fingers anymore. It doesn’t sound like they’re having a good day at all. But enough, is enough. Tenzou wants to continue reading his gossip column and decompress without having his phone vibrate every few seconds with an angry text message.

So he does the most logical thing and responds:

**Hey, sorry, but I think you got the wrong number.**

That apparently seemed to be the wrong thing to do. Because the rapid texts gains new speed and Tenzou watches just a tiny bit impressed at this stranger’s finger skills as he gets dressed down for being honest:

**%$^%^ &*!!! FUCK YOU!**

**4990$## IS THAT HOW YOU’RE GOING TO DO THIS? I TEACH IN FUCKING KINDERGARTEN YOU NUMBNUT AND MY CHILDREN CAN COME UP WITH A BETTER EXCUSE THAN THAT SAD RESPONSE OF YOURS! WRONG NUMBER MY FUCKING ASS, ASSHOLE!**

**IF I EVER SEE YOU, I WILL BOIL YOUR TEETH!**

**I WILL INVERT YOUR RIBCAGE!**

**I SWEAR TO THE HEAVENS I WILL FILL YOUR SINUSES WITH URINE!%$ &**

**$#^ & I WILL POUR CEMENT IN TO YOUR UGLY, BLACKHEAD-RIDDEN EARS, YOU DISGUSTING JERK!**

Did this person’s lover just not shower or anything? Because they sound disgusting.

Tenzou exhales slowly through his nose, shaking his head and responds:

**Listen, I know you’re having a bad day. And this guy sounds like a bad business. But you really got the wrong number.**

Tenzou finds himself watching the typing icon flash for a while, only for it to stop, disappear and continue again. Tenzou _sighs_ when the text comes in and reads as:

**A tool and a liar! WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED?! It’s like everything else in our relationship! Or lack thereof! Lie after lie and why, for once in your miserable life, can you just let me have the final say for a change! You’re probably already miles away! Gods!**

Shaking his head against the pillow and huffing just a little with mild irritation, Tenzou switches the application on his phone to the front facing camera, takes a photo of himself, uncaring that he’s shirtless and lying down on the bed, and sends it with:

**Not who you think. See?**

The typing icon appears and disappears for the longest time. Tenzou rolls his eyes at the ceiling, not realizing how ensnared he is by the ongoing yell-fest. Until the person on the other end sends him a selfie. With his middle finger held out.

**Stop using a random super hot guy pic off the internet for your identity you fucking loser! Who are you trying to fool and scam for more money now???!! That poor person, leave them alone!!!!@@ Gods, I hope one day you choke on the shit you talk!!!@@###@**

Tenzou stares at his phone screen for the longest time.

What he’s learned so far is that the person on the other end, judging from the angle of the camera, is a slender, somewhere between seventy to seventy-five kilograms, average height young male, who looks to be in his early twenties. Young, tanned, very distinct scar cutting across the bridge of his nose, expressive brown eyes, long hair held back in a loose ponytail. Judging from the background, the stranger seems to be seated on what looks like a bar top, green and yellow lights casting a glow on what looks like soft features, quite cute, beautiful even, had it not been for the middle finger and the sneer on his lips.

Tenzou supposes he should be flattered to be called hot by someone who looks like that.

But that isn’t the point.

He texts again, stops short and decides that the best way to do this is to just call the person up. The phone rings approximately three times before the call gets rejected. Tenzou stares at the screen just as his phone pings and the stranger texts:

**FAT CHANCE! LIKE HELL I’M LETTING YOU TALK YOURSELF OUT OF THIS!!!!**

**I am so angry at you! You had this conversation coming! This is the only way you’d even listen to me because when we’re together, you robbed me of that right to even speak! Or have an opinion! It was either your way or the highway! What did I ever do you to deserve something like that?!!?**

Tenzou is really starting to feel sorry for this guy. He comes off as supportive but really, he seemed to have gotten the short end of the stick in this relationship. Granted, the stranger is at a bar, has probably had enough to drink to go an mad texting rampage.

But enough is enough. Tenzou decides that this has gone far enough, with too much intimate details that he doesn’t want any part of.

**Look, go home. Get some sleep. Drink a lot of water and if you still want to yell at me tomorrow, then I’ll let you. Sounds fair?**

**Fine. Prick.**

**And you’re not the boss of me anymore! I cancelled you, remember?! You are dumped!! Die in a horrible forest fire, please! We are OVER! You can find your belongs in the landfill if you need it!**

The last response comes after a whole fifteen minutes after the stranger calls Tenzou a prick.

Tenzou scrolls up to take a look at the stranger’s face one more time, studying the pretty, cute face for longer than necessary before he shakes his head and puts his thankfully quiet and no longer vibrating cellphone on the night stand. He fluffs his pillow, turns to his side and promptly passes out.

He’ll finish reading his gossip column tomorrow or something.

*

The next day, somewhere in between Tenzou’s much needed break, he is sitting on a small floor stool in a breezy alleyway, right outside the backdoor of the Mos Burgers, having just taped a heating menthol pad under his white t-shirt. He places a few on his lower back too, one right on his tailbone before he tucks his shirt back into his black sweatpants. He sits there, his entire upper body and back aching after kneading dough for their burger buns all damn morning, his fingers numb and his shoulders and neck pretty much on fire.

There is a cup of tea by his sneakers, something he takes his time drinking before he goes back inside to, according to his boss, help with the late lunch deliveries. Gods, he hates that stupid pink, farting scooter. She really needs to get a new one. The thing is too small for a man of his size. He looks like a buffoon trying to speed race through Konoha’s city traffic in that scooter.

Sighing deeply, Tenzou picks up his tea and takes a sip, just as his phone vibrates in his pocket and he recognizes the phone number from the stranger last night. This one isn’t filled with insults, swear words. Instead, there is an animated emoticon of what looks like an eff crying. Which is then followed by a sad-faced egg that is bowing repeatedly in shame.

Tenzou doesn’t realized he’s smirking with amusement until the text comes in:

**I am so, SO SORRY. You did not deserve to be at the receiving end of all that vitriol.**

**I am ashamed and I cannot even begin to say how embarrassed I am for ruining your night and directing such horrible words your way.**

**Please let me make it up to you. Let me perhaps buy you coffee or lunch or dinner. Please accept my olive branch. I am willing to take you to it or even have it delivered to your destination of choice. I insist.**

**Please grant me a way to make it up to you.**

The animated emoticon of the distressed sad-faced egg bowing pops up again.

Tenzou blinks, tipping his head up towards the sky. He can let it go, honestly. He doesn’t need to be taking advantage of an apparently underpaid kindergarten teacher. But a coffee costs loose change, hardly more than a train pass ticket. A black, plain boring coffee anyway.

Maybe he does it out of pity for the stranger’s bruised ego. But Tenzou shrugs and responds with a time and place at a corner, local coffee shop that he knows serves cheap but decent coffee. It’s his day off tomorrow, and it’s not like he’s got any social plans in his schedule.

**Okay. Let’s meet at Lattest, on Tea Avenue. It’s right next to the bookstore. Tomorrow at 4 PM?**

**I know the place. Sounds great! I’ll see you then!**

An animated egg emoji with a thumbs up and big grinning smile pops up, happy red flashes appearing and making Tenzou smile for some silly reason. He can see someone like this stranger using something like an animated egg emoji. There’s a big difference between the drunken spiel the previous night and this polite, apologetic and properly typed response. The difference is night and day.

And if Tenzou puts on a little extra deodorant and exfoliates his ear with a loofah a little more before his meeting, he pretends not to notice.

Kind of.

*

Tenzou is standing outside Lattest ten minutes before four, dressed in a t-shirt, jeans and sneakers, damp hair slicked back and drying in the gentle autumn breeze when someone approaches him from his peripheral. Someone whose brown eyes widens at the sight of Tenzou, a bit of a dark flush gracing the apples of the stranger’s cheeks.

Tenzou’s assessment of him had been right. He is lean, slender, dressed in dark denims, white sneakers and a maroon polo shirt, long lustrous dark brown hair gathered up in a neat ponytail. The stranger parts his lips to say something, but ends up clearing his throat, flushing a little deeper, reaching back to rub the back of his head in an almost endearing and boyishly charming way.

“I’m the cancelled guy,” Tenzou says and offers his hand in a handshake. “Yelling texter?”

“That’s me, yes. I’m so, so _sorry,_ ” the stranger says, taking Tenzou’s hand in a firm and warm handshake. His hand is soft, his thumb a little dry. He comes off confident, polite, almost business like. He is inviting and open, pleasant faced and so unlike the raging lunatic who had spammed Tenzou’s phone with a plethora of insults and name calling unfitting for a kindergarten teacher, of all things. Tenzou can admit that the stranger isn’t at all bad to look at. “Iruka.”

“Nice to put a name on you,” Tenzou says, smiling a little lopsidedly. “Tenzou.”

“I’m so sorry, Tenzou-san.” Iruka releases Tenzou’s hand and bows politely. “I meant no disrespect to you. You seem like a decent guy. And well, you certainly don't deserve to be called the cancelled guy.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, Iruka-san, you seem fairly decent yourself and can probably do better than… your ex…” Tenzou shrugs. After all, Iruka’s ex sounded like a piece of work.

“Well, you’re not the first to say that. And I guess it must mean something if a stranger says it, hmm?” Iruka flushes, smiling a little sheepishly, a little embarrassedly. It's a little... cute. “Shall we?” Iruka points at the door of Lattest.

“Please,” Tenzou says, and holds the door open for Iruka, who steps ahead.

Tenzou will not, under pain of torture, admit to having checked out Iruka when he steps in. He does not, stare at his attractive behind for more than three seconds.

Nope.

Not at all.

He’s just tired from last night’s shift, that’s all.

**Author's Note:**

> Something I randomly thought of, told Rika who then just made my garbage better garbage.
> 
> I dunno. Should I write more of this? I mean whaaaat?


End file.
